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Demographic Destiny and the Presidential Elections
The demographic discussion in Charles Murray’s new book, which I finished a couple of weeks ago and posted about here earlier today, got me thinking about the effects of demographic change on American politics. I’ve known about the issue for quite a long time, mainly from the work of Mark Steyn and Ann Coulter about 15-20 years ago, and I’d shifted to a strongly anti-immigration position by 2008.
But it’s always useful to look at the facts, so I decided to look at the demographics of our Presidential elections. I found a good collection of exit polls from Roper, here, for the elections from 1976 to 2020. As I think that I’m the resident graph guy here at Ricochet, so I’ve prepared some graphs that I hope will prove helpful and informative.
My first task was to evaluate the voting trends of the major ethnic and racial groups. The exit polls report Presidential vote percentages for whites, blacks, and Hispanics all the way back to 1976. They include Asians from 1992, and an “other” category starting in 2004.
I constructed a PVI index of voting by race or ethnicity. I think that Charlie Cook came up with the idea, which is to evaluate the partisan lean of a state or district by comparing the margin of victory in such a state or district to the overall national margin of victory of the party in question. I applied this concept to vote margins by racial or ethnic group.
As a numeric convention, I adopted the Republican margin of victory as my variable, so a positive number PVI indicates a voting margin among a group favorable to the Republican, while a negative number indicates that the group favored the Democrat.
For example, in the 2020 election, Trump won white voters by 17 points, 58%-41%. Overall, he lost the election by 4 points, 47%-51%. So the white voter PVI in 2020 was 21 — the difference between Trump’s 17 point margin among whites and his -4 point margin overall. (Obviously, a negative margin means that he lost.) Similarly, in 1984, Reagan lost black voters by 82 points, 9%-91%, while winning the overall election by 18 points. So the black voter PVI in 1984 was a walloping -100 points.
Here’s a graph of this racial/ethnic PVI for the Presidential elections from 1976 to 2020:
As you can see, there is a pretty steady increase in the white PVI over this period, exceeding 20 points for every election since 2008. It is interesting that Trump actually did less well among whites than Romney had done, though the difference was minimal.
The Hispanic PVI bounces around a lot, but remains highly unfavorable at -27 points or more for every single year except 2004 (when it was -12). You can see that Trump’s performance among Hispanics was pretty good, and actually improved over Romney.
The black PVI is just a disaster for Republicans. Trump did better than any Republican had done since Dole in 1996. The apparent improvement in Republican performance in 1992 and 1996 is not because H.W. Bush and Dole did notably better, but because Perot picked up some of the black vote without substantially reducing the Republican share.
In fairness, Trump’s better performance in 2016 among black voters, compared to McCain and Romney, is probably due to Obama being on the ticket in 2008 and 2012. But Trump did do better, among blacks, than W had done in 2000 or 2004, and Trump deserves credit for his improvement in this demographic between 2016 and 2020.
What about the Asians? Here’s the graph limited to whites, Asians, and others. Note that this graph is for a shorter time period, 1992-2020.
These results are pretty bad for Republicans, and should be a cautionary lesson for any Republicans who think that Asian immigration is a good thing. There may be some other benefits, but politically, this demographic has been a disaster since 2000. Trump did turn things around a bit after Romney’s catastrophic -43 figure in 2012, but even in 2020, the Asian PVI was -23.
I’m not sure what to make of the “others,” except that they’re also an unfavorable demographic for Republicans. I suspect that this group is a combination of Pacific Islanders, Middle Easterners, and India-Indians.
The second issue is the changing demographics of the electorate. I have several graphs on this subject, showing the major decline in the percentage of white voters, especially after 2000. Here’s the first graph:
This graph shows the major decline in the white vote, from 89% in 1976 to 67% in 2020, but also illustrates that the white vote remains much, much larger than the other groups. The next graph is the same data but excluding whites, so that the changes in the other groups are easier to see.
This scale shows the enormous increase in the Hispanic vote, from 1% in 1976 to 13% in 2020. The black vote has increased also, but only modestly. The Asian and other categories remain small, but are growing.
I have one more graph on this issue, again using the same data, but this time displaying it as a stacked area graph:
I find this to be the most helpful illustration. (Sorry that the top of the graph is a bit ragged. Due to rounding, the percentages of voters in the various demographic groups don’t always add up to precisely 100%.)
None of this is good for Republicans.
I think that this information should be directly relevant to your views on immigration. I worry that many pro-immigration conservatives base their views on sentimentality and virtue-signaling. Please, stop having visions of the Statute of Liberty. Stop thinking of some second-rate poem written by a socialist.
Do what President Washington told us to do. Evaluate issues in the light of our interests. We have a right to decide whether or not to allow foreigners to become members of our polity. We should not be bringing in millions of foreigners who are going to cause a continued, and disastrous, drift to the political Left in our country.
I have one final pair of graphs. It illustrates that this demographic change has already caused a major shift to the political Left.
To prepare these graphs, I calculated what the Republican Presidential margin of victory (or loss) would have been in the elections since 1988, assuming the same racial and ethnic demographics that existed in 1980. The next graph shows the difference between these hypothetical results and the actual election results:
The green bars show the hypothetical Republican margin of victory, assuming 1980 demographics. The orange bars are the actual margin (there’s no orange bar in 2000 because it was a popular vote tie, at least when rounded to the nearest percent).
As you can see, in this hypothetical, the Republican candidate would have won every single election since 1988. Even McCain would have won the popular vote over Obama, narrowly, in 2008. Romney would have been a big winner, and Trump would have won bigly, twice.
My final graph is based on the same hypothetical and the same data, instead of showing the actual and hypothetical margins, it shows the difference between the hypothetical margin (with 1980 demographics) and the actual margin of victory (or loss) in the Presidential elections between 1988 and 2020.
In the past 3 Presidential elections, demographic change since 1980 has resulted in a swing of 11-12% in favor of the Democrats.
All of this has been quite obvious for at least 20 years. In 2002, Ruy Teixeira and John Judis, two Democrats, wrote a book titled The Emerging Democratic Majority making precisely this point. Though, unlike me, I think that they were gloating rather than lamenting.
And what have we Republicans and conservatives done about it? Just about nothing. We had control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency from 2001-2006, and again from 2017-2018. No immigration restrictions were passed.
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for your attention, and I look forward to your thoughts and reactions.
Published in Elections
Blame the inaction on “Free Trade” Camber of Cheep Labor .
When I look at this picture of AntiFA members, it makes me think that racial demographics are not a key factor. I am interested in church attendance as a factor.
Jerry, it’s a bit dated but Pew Research did a study of second generation immigrants – including of political identification. The second generation seems to be trending towards the US norm. Which is not an argument either way for immigration, but just worth taking on board when matching demographics with vote share.
I was under the impression that exit polls were notoriously unreliable.
Jerry…
Thanks so much for all of this work…this is very interesting data and the graphs make it very easy to see!!
However, I respectfully disagree with one point of your overall argument. Of course we need to control borders…you can’t have a nation state without them but I also would argue that we need immigration especially if one wants to have a vibrant market economy. Not just for labor and consumption but also for ideas. I just don’t think you can lay all this at the feet of immigration; the Republican Party must shoulder much of the blame. In all of these groups there is a decent size contingent of center right voters on social and economic issues. No matter what one thinks of Donald Trump he showed a glimpse of this. One only has to peruse YouTube to see the growing number of more conservative African Americans that are just asking the Republican Party to convince them to come to their tent. The Republican Party of Mitt Romney…Jonah Goldberg….and ( yes Gary if you are reading Ronald Reagan) never attempted to reach out to this vote. The party does not have to move to the left on every issue to win these voters….these voters are conservative already….the party just needs to pursue them. The Republican Party can get 20-30 percent of all these groups and in doing so can forge a new coalition that would wipe out the Democratic Party….but will it?? Most likely not.
I’ve been hearing people assert that for many years, and I used to accept it. Lately I find myself wondering if it’s true, and if it is, if it’s worth the trade-offs.
It does not matter. Our system of rules and government is going to be wiped out by traitors at home who work to import people who do not believe in our system of rules and government. The fight is already over.
Atta boy!
Those lawns aren’t going to cut themselves.
Just call it like I see it.
I am 51. I have seen, over my life, a the left always winning. They have setbacks, but always end up winning in the long run. That is just how it has gone.
Yes, the failure to make the case, to show respect for eligible voters, is a huge problem.
Zafar, I appreciate the link, but that source does not say what you said it says.
This troubles me, as your comment has garnered quite a few “likes.” I’m not trying to be critical of people. Everyone, including me, has a tendency to like information that supports their own presuppositions.
So here’s what your source actually says, in the first paragraph:
It’s complicated, as this does vary a bit by issue, and the generational results may be confounded by age (i.e. the second generation immigrant sample is younger, and may tend to tilt Dem for that reason).
However, your data source does not support your claim. Here are the figures for party affiliation:
It’s worse for ideology. I’ll report the margin of conservative over liberal, so a positive number indicates more conservatives and a negative number indicates more liberals. Here are the figures:
So I think that this source supports my thesis quite strongly. These two immigrant groups are bad for Republicans and conservatives, and the second generation is not an improvement from our perspective.
Capitalism is dominating the world. The left has moved from socialism to crony-capitalism as Dr. Bastiat has noted. Even leftists had to concede to the free market.
There are two claims here, both unsupported by any empirical evidence. I’m not saying that you’re necessarily incorrect, but you have not presented any facts.
On the “vibrant market economy” thing, I suspect that you are wrong. We had a pretty good economy when immigration was low — say the 1920s and the 1950s. There were bad times too, of course, in the 1930s, but it doesn’t seem to have had anything to do with immigration.
On the minority outreach thing, I just don’t see any empirical evidence that this is feasible. I see no evidence whatsoever that minority voters are “conservative,” and my prior comment (about Zafar’s data from Pew) suggests that this is not true for Hispanics or Asians.
I have seen indications that black voters call themselves “conservative” more than one would expect, but they sure don’t vote that way. You think that this can change. I doubt it, and you offer no evidence, just hope.
I doubt that this is true, and I suspect that it will be a big political mistake to try. This is based partially on the numbers, and partially on my impression of the mood of many white voters.
I think that a lot of us are fed up with the special treatment for minorities, especially blacks. There’s a bizarre system of Black Supremacy at work in this country, with special privileges for blacks in education, employment, and probably some other areas of life. The black violent crime rate is very high, as discussed in my other post about Charles Murray’s new book, and part of the outreach is to be soft on crime because, presumably, that’s what black folks want. President Trump really emphasized this in his 2020 State of the Union address.
Maybe this will pick up some black votes. I’m skeptical, but maybe. But I think that it’s going to lose us some white votes, and rightfully so.
I don’t think that you’re going to succeed with black voters with a message of equal treatment. They are the beneficiaries of favorable treatment. A fair system is going to hurt them.
But let’s be optimistic. Say that you manage to pick up 10% of the black vote with an outreach, but you alienate 5% of the white vote. What’s the math on that?
There are about 5 times as many white voters as black. Picking up 10% of the black vote gets you +1.3%. Losing 5% of the white vote costs you -3.4%. The net loss is -2.1%.
Trump was never soft on crime. He did some reforms to our prison system but he supported police throughout his Presidency.
Hi Jerry. I based my comment on the movement re identifying with Republicans. Hispanics 1st to 2nd generation 16% to 19%. Asians 27% to 32 %.
That was hasty. Identification as Democrats also goes up. But the Asian 32% is moving towards the general public’s 39%, I thought. ?
Good work Jerry. But I think the immigration fiasco and the CRT crap is starting to make the minorities wake up and see how much the Dems are a threat to their families. Will see next year.
We seem to be making inroads with hispanics that are middle class I think.
The Left will turn us into Venezuala.
Dr. Bastiat among others thinks that our left will take a more fascist turn. From what I can tell, that seems more accurate. There aren’t enough true believing Bernie Bros to go down the Venezuela route.
Jerry…
We are going have to agree to disagree on this. I do not have solid empirical evidence at my finger tips and with my work schedule at the moment don’t have time to go look. I have anecdotal evidence….watching Candice Owens and the Blexit movement…..watching the videos of Kevin’s Corner and Brandon Tatum….seeing how many new followers Thomas Sowell has. Hispanics and African Americans are more conservative by nature….that is why Joe Biden ran the table in South Carolina…..there is a decent amount there….the Republican Party needs to try.
I want to reiterate….we need to control the border….we need a legal structured system of immigration….but yes I do believe we need immigration and cannot be a nation whose ancestors came from west of the Black Sea….North of the Mediterranean and south of what is today Poland….I am not a Know Nothing…..besides….using me as an example my DNA while predominately Western European still has some African and Cherokee mixed in with it…..also 150 years ago if we are having this discussion then we are probably saying no one east of the Alps….south of the Pyrenees….and maybe even north of the Rhine should be allowed as that would be “white” 150 years ago….Italians et al would not be white 150 years ago…..
The Republican Party has the opportunity to create a new powerful coalition based on a strong set of classical liberal and conservative principles across all ethnicities and the working class….like him or despise him Donald Trump showed this possibility…..now it is time for someone to take it and make it happen…..if they don’t then I would predict the Republican Party will go the way of the Whigs…..
Just my thoughts…..I realize many will disagree and that’s great….but we have an opportunity here…..I for one hope we take it….
Agree with Q. Maybe the Fla. governor can do it. Just hope he stays off Twitter.
Great post, thank you for the information! I’ve been mulling writing up something related to this (but in my abstract, roundabout, often nonsensical way). You bring up Ruy Teixeira – he was on a panel recently discussing this and had quite surprising conclusions that served as a warning to Democrats, related to minority voting trends especially among
HispanicLatinx voters. It will be interesting to see what happens in the demographic trends after 2022. At least it will give us something new to talk about!I think it absolutely is not true.
It is a figment of the imagination of certain elites who hold an idealized picture of immigration in their heads, thinking it mostly legal and mostly meritocratic. It is neither.
They did. They weren’t successful.
Why? Three reasons. First, you’ve got to show up. As a notable radio entertainer often preached, conservatives have to constantly educate the public. Typically, Republican candidates only show up to ask for votes at election time. Second, your policies have to address the problems the voters perceive as problems. School choice can sell to urban minority voters if candidates do the work. Running for school board seats, city council. Most politics is local. Think about the millions of dollars wasted on advertising on “minority” radio and TV, how many school board candidates you could support. Could you have a better foe than the teachers’ unions?
Third, patience. Missionary work is hard, frustrating and often unrewarding.
One more thing. Hunt where the ducks are. I would spend my time and effort on Hispanic voters. Their influence is growing.
I have a theory, we are at the high water mark of leftism in American politics.
I don’t care about how many voters label themselves “conservative”. I care about how they vote. Create policies to attract their votes. Be there. Do the work.
Why do you think so?